65. A Rockstar Chemist and Her Cancer-Attacking “Lawn Mower”

People I (Mostly) Admire

Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher

Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2022

⏱️ 51 minutes

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Summary

Stanford professor Carolyn Bertozzi’s imaginative ideas for treating disease have led to ten start-ups. She talks with Steve about the next generation of immune therapy she’s created, and why she might rather be a musician.

Transcript

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0:00.0	My guest today, Carolyn Potosi, is an absolute superstar chemist.
0:10.0	She created a new field of chemistry called bio-orthogonal chemistry, and she's also had
0:15.3	a transformational impact in the area of glyobiology.
0:18.9	She's been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and won all sorts of awards, including
0:23.5	a MacArthur Genius grant, and her ideas have been the basis for launching almost a dozen
0:28.0	startups.
0:30.2	Part of it is just the challenge, can we actually make a medicine that is like a lawnmower?
0:35.2	Can we actually make a tuberculosis diagnostic test from these fluorescent sugars?
0:42.4	Welcome to People I mostly admire with Steve Levin.
0:48.1	Of all the guests I've had on this show, I would say, Carolyn is the one whose work I understand
0:53.1	the least going into the conversation.
0:55.6	I tried reading a few of her academic papers, but I couldn't make any sense of them.
1:00.4	I'm really looking forward to the challenge of trying to keep up with her and learn something
1:04.5	new.
1:05.5	And if that fails, well, I guess we'll be reduced to talking about our favorite metal
1:09.7	bands, because believe it or not, in addition to her academic exploits in college, Carolyn
1:15.1	played in a band with legendary rage against the machine guitarist Tom Morello.
1:24.1	Carolyn, so let me be totally straight with you.
1:26.6	I know virtually nothing about chemistry, and what tiny bits I'm familiar with would
1:31.7	be examples of chemistry from the 1800s, Sir Humphrey Davy using electrodes to identify
1:38.0	new elements and men to live in the periodic table, discovery of DNA, and the double helix
1:43.8	view of the work of Rosalind Franklin and Watson and Crick.
	...

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